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Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#121

Post by CuriouslyC »

alecco wrote: post #75
gregwebs wrote: post #17

This article mentions that regenerative agriculture as the solution. There is a lot of concern now about the potential for a global food shortage at the end of this year because of rising fertilizer prices (leading to less planting). Regenerative agriculture can help solve this as well by focusing on restoring the biome of the soil, thereby harnessing nitrogen from the air and minerals from the soil.

What would you think about a farmer who doesn't know tech giving opinions on what the Tech sector should do? Farming is extremely hard and competitive, for mostly razor-thin margins and very high risks. One of the biggest problems is weeds. If you use these naive methods you'll end up with weed infections and then you have to either dump a lot of herbicides to recover the land or blunt tumble, basically entombing all…

You sound like you don't know a lot of farmers then. Most farmers these days inherited their farms, and run it mostly the same way their parents did, with a little input from local AG programs. For the most part, farmers are some of the most conservative, stick with what worked in the past people I've ever met.

Joel Salatin talks a lot of shit about the typical farmer too, and with good reason. The difference there is that he's way more profitable than your average farmer on a per acre basis. He's documented everything he does at Polyface, and others have duplicated his success, yet hyper conservative farmers are still trying to farm the same broke ass way and complaining they can't make a living.

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#122

Post by [deleted] »

seunosewa wrote: post #103
alecco wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a simplistic analysis. Farmers have to time things around season, weather events, water availability (e.g. almost dry wells), floods, and many other variables changing all the time. For example, after heavy rains machines can't get into the field because they get stuck. And if you plant right before rains then when the mud dries it becomes too hard for seedlings to break it. Making all this work is very hard.…

Do you really think that farmers in developing countries have it easier than those in developed countries? That they can more easily afford the cost of environmental regulation? The carbon footprint of the average American or Canadian is about 14 tones per year. For India, Indonesia, and Brazil it's about 2 tons per year. Thus it is fair to expect developed countries to do more to tackle climate change. Having said t…

[deleted]

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#123

Post by fsflover »

hansel_der wrote: post #95
fsflover wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There isn't really a best seed. There are simply tradeoffs. (Probably a naive question, but I know very little about the topic, sorry) Why not to make GMO crops without tradeoffs?

probably because "GMO crops without tradeoffs" are a contradiction

Could you elaborate? GMO crops possess no safety risk (if that's what you mean): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_crops.

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#124

Post by juanani »

somenameforme wrote: post #57

This is the conclusion of the paper [1] that this article is based upon: "We suggest that any real declines are generally most easily explained by changes in cultivated varieties between 1950 and 1999, in which there may be trade-offs between yield and nutrient content." What National Geographic says scientists say, "Scientists say that the root of the problem lies in modern agricultural processes that increase crop…

No post body was provided.

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#125

Post by specialist »

orlp wrote: post #79
saiya-jin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's you. When I come home and eat stuff from my parents garden, the differences in some cases are massive. Carrots for example taste 10x more intense, even one that was taken from soil weeks ago. And I am comparing to bio carrots we buy in Switzerland, so can't go much higher than that when shopping (apart from farmers markets maybe but that depends what kind of farm). Maybe its about transport and p…

Commercial mass-produced tomatoes, bananas and other climacteric fruit are picked heavily unripe, shipped in this more durable state, and in the destination country are rapidly artificially ripened in ethylene gas chambers. The same commercial mass-produced fruits and vegetables also have been cultivated for decades for resistance against disease, size, and shelf life. Taste is often only secondary to those. On one h…

Yes and:

> mass-produced MBA-optimized to death

Plus counterfeits, knockoffs, gray-market, etc. eg Fake Italian olive oil.

I don't know what to call this category, or their purveyors. Inauthentic? Market parasites? The eBay / Amazon (unregulated markets) problem?

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#126

Post by api »

somenameforme wrote: post #57

This is the conclusion of the paper [1] that this article is based upon: "We suggest that any real declines are generally most easily explained by changes in cultivated varieties between 1950 and 1999, in which there may be trade-offs between yield and nutrient content." What National Geographic says scientists say, "Scientists say that the root of the problem lies in modern agricultural processes that increase crop…

Virtually all modern media exists to push a narrative, usually a Right Wing(tm) or Left Wing(tm) narrative. I'm not convinced you can get to the truth by "triangulating" since this assumes at least one party is actually saying something valid.

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#127

Post by specialist »

pessimizer wrote: post #89
somenameforme wrote: post #57

This is the conclusion of the paper [1] that this article is based upon: "We suggest that any real declines are generally most easily explained by changes in cultivated varieties between 1950 and 1999, in which there may be trade-offs between yield and nutrient content." What National Geographic says scientists say, "Scientists say that the root of the problem lies in modern agricultural processes that increase crop…

There are at least four other papers directly referenced and linked in the article. You picked the first one.

Well. I too am occasionally guilty of doing this. As a geek who knows how search is supposed to work, it's hard for me to drop the assumption that the highest hit is the most relevant. Even though I know it's not.

For future, I'll try to be more mindful.

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#128

Post by jason-phillips »

orlp wrote: post #79
saiya-jin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's you. When I come home and eat stuff from my parents garden, the differences in some cases are massive. Carrots for example taste 10x more intense, even one that was taken from soil weeks ago. And I am comparing to bio carrots we buy in Switzerland, so can't go much higher than that when shopping (apart from farmers markets maybe but that depends what kind of farm). Maybe its about transport and p…

Commercial mass-produced tomatoes, bananas and other climacteric fruit are picked heavily unripe, shipped in this more durable state, and in the destination country are rapidly artificially ripened in ethylene gas chambers. The same commercial mass-produced fruits and vegetables also have been cultivated for decades for resistance against disease, size, and shelf life. Taste is often only secondary to those. On one h…

> There are only two kinds of product left: the small-scale artisanal extremely pricy product (e.g. farmer's market), and the mass-produced MBA-optimized to death commercial product.

I discovered this phenomenon myself over the past decade, seeing the race to the bottom in automation, while at the same watching artisinal cottage industries sprout in East Austin in response.

Whether it was nitrogenated cold-brew coffee in kegs, handmade denim jeans, handmade cheeses and charcuterie, there was definitely a drive to produce high-quality, handmade items locally, seemingly in response to tasteless, soulless products begat by automation. I figured that is what the future held, two classes of product, one rather expensive and high quality, made by hand, and the other symbolized by a soulless $5 Garden Center plastic chair.

The reason why a market exists for those artisinal handmade products, I reckon, is because people at some level still crave the authenticity evidenced by something made by skilled craftspeople.

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#129

Post by specialist »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #115
antris wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an ecofascist adjacent argument, and is not based on reality. Not much land is needed to feed people, most of it is being used to produce meat and dairy, which is a waste. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

You're right. Also, not much space is needed to house people. Everyone can just start living in coffins with breathing tubes. It's so efficient, that when you die they can just wheel you into a hole in the ground and be done with it.

Totally. I much prefer my oversized mobile coffin, sporting conditioned air and a banging infotainment system, ferrying me to and fro, to the stationary coffin conveniently located in a central location.

Re: Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be

#130

Post by specialist »

giantg2 wrote: post #114
antris wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an ecofascist adjacent argument, and is not based on reality. Not much land is needed to feed people, most of it is being used to produce meat and dairy, which is a waste. https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

Well, you'd have to resort to fascism to force all people to become vegan.

Slippery slope: removing subsidies for factory farmed meat inevitably leads to vegan fascism.

Nice.

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